SBC woes

[Fairlight]

With neither thought nor caution, Jay Ashworth blurted:
> 
> SBC bought AT&T, and then made that the primary marketing name.
> 
> The execs are mostly SBC, as I understand it.
> 
> This may have been a mistake, since the *reason* AT&T was ripe to be
> bought in the first place was that the mistakes made by McCaw Cellular,
> to whom they licensed the AT&T Wireless tag "broke their brand". Or so
> I understand it to be widely thought in those circles.

Okay, but still--this is -so- wrong at the "regulatory" level.  I quote
that word, as there doesn't seem to be much regulation actually
transpiring.

You have SBC and BellSouth, both of them Baby Bell's, reuniting with AT&T.
Worse, Cingular Wireless was a joint SBC/BellSouth company.  Then AT&T
sold their wireless off -to Cingular-.  SBC and AT&T are now together,
and if they manage to acquire BellSouth, then as far as I can tell from
the casual public history of it, Cingular will -also- be in with the New
and Improved[?!?!] AT&T.  Voila, they just reacquired their wireless.

Oh, let's not forget that AT&T was dropping parts of its LD service as part
of its strategy, yet at least BellSouth is offering full long distance
service to its customers, so once again AT&T would be back in the LD market
unless BellSouth drops that, which I highly doubt given the amount they've
poured into getting it going.

So that's 2 Baby Bells and 2 wireless providers, as well as (for most
intents and purposes) 2 LD carriers--all back under one roof with the
original monopolistic parent.  I dunno what SBC does as far as LD, but it
could be 3 for all I know.

I mean, has anti-monopoly even -glanced- at this deal?  The whole thing
positively reeks of ClearChannel-type rubberstamping.

mark->